Global Grassroots' Young Women's Academy offers a curriculum for vulnerable yet motivated recent high school graduates who wish to initiate social change in their communities. Their ventures focus on issues such as early marriage, teen pregnancy, girls' education, street children & child malnutrition. The Academy offers social entrepreneurship and leadership training, personal transformation exercises, mindfulness practices, trauma healing, & a scholarship to cover one semester of university.
Our Young Women's Academy is held during the 9-months between high school graduation & the start of university when girls are at greatest risk of dropping out due to family pressure to find jobs or contribute to household chores, early marriage, male predators, or unplanned pregnancy. In developing countries, they are least likely to have access to resources needed to advance their own solutions to social issues impacting women & girls & to be able to envision a future that includes university.
We help vulnerable girls turn their own ideas for social change into sustainable community-based organizations addressing priority issues facing women & girls and learn their own potential to lead social change. They learn financial management, creative problem solving, public speaking, conscious leadership, mindfulness practices, & other entrepreneurial skills. As they gain confidence & develop as leaders, they are less likely to succumb to pressures that may derail their dreams for the future.
Girls who are educated are less likely to become pregnant or marry young; their earning potential increases; they stay healthier. Education helps break the cycle of poverty. Our Academy also helps young women & girls learn to drive sustainable social change in their villages. The 23 participants who just graduated from our 2017 program impacted nearly 19,000 people - 10,133 direct beneficiaries + 8,787 indirect beneficiaries - with multiple ripples of impact that will be felt for years to come.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
